Call me Robin Hood.

I started SL back in 2005, then quit for a year, then came back in 2006, then quit for about a year and a half, and now I'm back.

Each successive time I join, I take some time to look around, see what's new in the scripting and building world, and take a look at what people are buying and selling.

And every time I look, I notice a trend. With every passing year, there are more options for building and scripting. There are more tools available, more fun and exciting avenues for creative thinking and artistic expression. And surely, with such great new power and freedom, the scripting and building world would see an influx of great new scripts, masterfully created and sold for reasonable prices!

But, alas, this is not the case.

What I saw when I joined SL again a few days ago was enough to make my blood boil. I looked around at all the things people were designing and selling and realized (after a quick look at the LSL wiki) that most of this stuff is REALLY EASY to make, and yet most of it costs an arm and a leg to buy! There are people selling second-rate scripts for thousands of L$, things that would take me maybe 5 minutes to make (and with better quality than what's being sold)! There are people selling builds that are WAY too prim-heavy, things that I could duplicate in half the prims. People selling 10-line scripts for thousands of L$, when I could spend maybe 3 minutes writing the script and hand it out for free.

The new popular trend is to mass-produce as much CRAP as you can make, and then sell the lot of it for as much as people will pay.

This is a horrible way to do business, selling filth to the gullible masses and making a mint from sub-par work.

So I have decided that it is my personal mission this time around to find as many of these horrible, poorly-designed creations, re-design them, improve upon them, and then either give them away for free (and open-source them) or sell them for EXTREMELY MODEST prices. If the script is a quick 10-minute job, or if it's a 10-minute build, I'll hand it out free, full-perms. If it takes me a couple hours to put together, I'll probably sell it for L$100 or so, depending on the complexity of the script and build. (I might still give it away free, TBH.)

The point of my vendetta is to take all the filth that these mongers are selling, and IMPROVE upon it, then make it available to the GENERAL PUBLIC, the POOR MASSES for as little cost as possible.

This starts TODAY.

So all you filth-mongers, expect to see your sales drop. And to the rest of you, if you've got any questions, I'm happy to teach, and if you'd like a build or script, ask and I'll try to provide it to you.

Don't pay for badly-designed trash anymore. Demand quality!

A side note... I have actually seen some very amazing and beautiful work done in my absence; it's not all filth. I've seen some beautiful sculpty statues and amazing script work done. I applaud those of you who are working to contribute worthwhile art to the community, even if you do sell your work. This should be a Renaissance, not a dark age, and you're doing well to promote that.

And a final parting message to all scripters and builders:

Please, please, PLEASE don't degrade your art. Create the best possible scripts and builds you can. You've got talents that many do not possess, and it would be wrong of you to abuse those talents and take advantage of those that have none. Sell your work if you want, but make sure that your work is the BEST work you could provide. You're smart enough, and you're skilled enough, don't let those abilities go to waste mass-producing filth.

Would you rather see a wondrous and beautiful SL, filled with beautiful things and powerful, amazing scripts? Or do you enjoy living in a SL populated by prim-heavy, ugly builds and laggy obnoxious scripts?

Do the right thing.

</rant>

I can mostly agree about the quality of products. I tend to do simple scripts for people for free or for very little compensation, and then usually give it out full permission. I have the feeling a lot of the people here at the Scripting Tips forum do that kind of thing (I mean look at all the content we post here for ALL to see publicly!), so to a certain extent I think you might be preaching to the choir.

There are a couple other things to keep in mind though. 1.) There is a constantly an influx of both new residents and new scripters, who are going to start off simple and need to try to make their way however they can. 2.) Many scripters need to try to earn some kind of L$ for whatever in-world expenses they have, and that can be a lot more difficult to do with large complex projects (which can give you a decent one-time profit but don't usually have a large market afterwards) than for small but useful scripts that lots of people might enjoy. I think there might also be a lot of inconsistency because of a lack of visibility on prices, so scripters may do things for either way too little or way too much, and customers may have quite varied expectations on price and schedule as well.

Remember too that as things go, programming is a pretty highly skilled job, and anything more than a trivial application that is right in line with what the LSL library is designed for can take a lot of time and effort compared to rezzing a few prims, squishing them around until they look right, and calling it a day. Don't mean to sound snobbish or anything, but it's the way things are.

Hi Sneaky,

During your crusade, if you need any help with your scripting then this is the place to visit.

By the way, this is the Scripting Tips forum... where people help each other with their scripts... for... um... well, free.

Peace.

I'm sure such things do go on, i've seen my share. But I think the characterization that all or most is crap is simply wrong. But good luck in any case.

Take a loooong look again in the 4 content creation forums. A plethora of user generated, wonderful, free tools are available for doing sculpties, textures, animations and even scripts now.

Take a look at LSLEditor by one of our own. He spent well over a year getting this project up and running so that we can not only write & syntax check, but actually run most of the functions in RL without having to be logged in.

And unfortunately your preaching is reaching the wrong crowd. No Payment On File accounts aren't allowed in the forums.

So, ooops, sorry, don't agree with your assessment at all.

Second Life is made of efforts and hard labor. You and I can contribute too. Your work and contributions may be appreciated in Sherwood and Nottingham but your name will be unknown in the rest of the community.
For that I am glad because I may not share your opinion about good and bad, pretty and ugly.
I like the rough life on the mainland, where land is joined, divided, Terra formed build on and sold, where giant empty Malls are raised and erased, where somebody is cheated and another one is a cheater.
I know what I like and I will do what I can to make it come true in my Second Life.

And I wish you good luck with your efforts!

Yours sincerely
Dora Gustafson

PS! Had all of you generation (2005) stayed In World all the years, the world would have been very different, I am sure.

You're definitely in the wrong place, Dude... People here never ask for money (afaik), sometimes they have to be forced to take it....

People are here, because they wanna learn and improve - not because they wanna get rich... There are some pretty decent products out there which are - in my opinion - worth a lot more than the builders charge for them. But one has to search for them. You don't buy the first product you see in RL, too, do you? You compare. And you'll find out pretty fast which product has a decent value...

If you make the wonderful scripts open source then folks will sell them in closed source versions.

Quite likely the same people that are selling the scripts you object to.

Who are in many cases already doing just that, selling scripts that others made available for free.

I agree with you to a point. However, how simple or complex a script is has no bearing on it's worth. Sure, alot of scripts out there are just a few lines of code, but what that script PROVIDES to the end user may be worth alot more. Say I run an RP sim, and I need an object that hands out a combat system that's used in my sim. Sure, easy peasy script to write, but me, as a sim owner, stands to loose alot of members, and potential $ from renters if I cannot hand out the needed combat system automatically. Therefore, it may be worth a few hundred to a thousand L's to me to pay someone to script that for me. Scripters often loose track of the fact that people who don't script, well, DONT SCRIPT. The easiest script there is, the hello world default script, is greek to the non scripter, so just because YOU think it's a simple script doesnt mean it is that simple to anyone.

As far as selling bad scripts goes, yeah, there's alot of people out there who code badly and charge alot for it, but that's a buyer beware situation. Scripts, just like builds or clothing, or animations, or anything else one can buy in SL is something that requires a bit of shopping around to get the best deal.

Do you think that your 'high and mighty' attitude towards rewriting and open sourcing everything is going make me start shaking in my boots? Hardly. The same people out there who pay for freebie scripts don't search the forums for free stuff, they simple do what they've always done, they search classifieds, and buy what they need. I protect myself the way I always have. I write quality, low lag, efficient scripts, and put them in quality, well built and well textured builds, and sell them at a fair price. It keeps customers coming back, and it generates new customers from testimonials from previous customers. Don't look down your nose like those of us who sell are greedy. I hardly get rich from running my business in SL. The return for me is the fun of trying to run a profitable business, and the side benefit of paying for my land, advertising, and tier costs with SL rather than out of pocket.... and honestly, that's about all I really make as far as profit is concerned.


http://www.secondscripter.com/

That's not necessarily true. Availability also has a lot to do with worth. If someone is trying to charge a ridiculous price for something that someone else would do for very little because it is a simple implementation, a buyer will tend to go for the less expensive product. The problem is availability. A lot of people don't know where to look for scripts or for scripters, or what a reasonable price for something is. Just like in the "real world", things that are easier to produce TEND to be lower in price (though there are certainly other factors).

Hahaha, of course! I greatly appreciate the free help that places like this forum and the Scripters groups give. And I will do my best to contribute to it!

The kinds of things I'm crusading against are blatant abuses, things that are OBVIOUSLY easy to do, and yet people are charging obscene amounts for them.

For example, today I put together a REALLY good Sim-Wide communication system. It took me about 10 minutes. The meat of it relies on listeners, llOwnerSay, and llRegionSay. It's not a difficult script.

I've seen people selling this very script for L$1500. To me, that's just wrong.

I'm not going to stop people from selling their scripts, nor am I going to stop people from selling garbage.

What I am going to do is find scripts that should be simple, write them up (with some nice improvements), and SHARE them with the world.

If they're difficult, then I won't undercut their business too much. But if they're simple, which so many are, then there's no reason anyone should be charged so much for them.

Speaking of which...

h++p://z3row3b.com/slscripts/lsl/Sim_Wide_Chat.txt

(change h++p to http obviously.)

There's the script for that sim-wide chat. Just throw it in a prim and wear it, and you're ready to go. Read /1 chelp for more info.

Sneaky ... if you need a place in world to distribute your scripts from give me a buzz. I was planning to set up a spot on my land to distribute some free scripts that I had written and sell my big project script-set once I finish it.

Thanks! I'll be sure to keep in touch.

If any of you want copies of the scripts I've written so far, let me know and I'll send 'em all over to you. I've got plenty of basic, useful things, all open source, all documented with comments, and all free to share with everyone.

Just send me an in-world IM.

Maybe you should post them to the scripting library here in the forums, then they would actually be available to everyone.

I would, but since the [ php ] tags don't work, there's really no point. It just messes it all up and makes it unreadable.

But I DID post a link to it...

http://www.z3row3b.com/slscripts/lsl/Sim_Wide_Chat.txt

That's perfect to copy-paste into a lsl script, indentation and everything.

the PHP tags are for people using workarounds, and maybe to a lesser degree to have things in place for the mythical fixing of the forums.

There is also the SL wiki where formatting can be preserved a little more easily, you can put things under your user page, or move to the library if you think they meet the guidelines posted there.

Yep, I started posting a few examples to the library so that they are more widely available. But that may have changed, in case no one noticed, people in a Resident Answers thread are stating that the forums are open to one and all now, no matter payment status. Haven't checked it with an alt yet for myself, but it is something I had been bitching about for a very long time.


But now this brings me to something else. Hey Strife, what would the chances be for there to be a User Scripts page along the lines of the Library w/o the restrictions????? A place that everyone could link thier scripts to?

Also, it's not worthless to post code here even with the built-in forum software. If you hit the 'Quote' button on a post with a script, you'll see the original script text (complete with indentation and no extra added spaces in the middle) in the edit field. You can then copy and paste into your in-world script, offline LSL editor, etc.

This is gold! I did not realize that until now, thank you

No offense, but since that website is about hacking, and your're an unverified alt, I'll likely never dare click on your link. Just the state of the world these days.

Haha, no offense taken. I understand your hesitance. Rest assured that it's a simple text file, nothing more. If you'd like, I can move my script repository to my personal blog, on a different host, where there isn't as much of a "hacking" focus.

And as for my hacking site, we are in no way malicious. We're more about the exploration and development of working security systems, as opposed to the malicious and dangerous dark-side of hacking that the media so often portrays.

I'm not unverified by the way... While I have no payment info on file (as I don't wish to link the account with any financial institutions) I've verified my identity through the site by using my ID number.

ANYWHO...

For those of you who want an in-world copy of my open-source scripts, and who would like to share your own, I've started a new group:

"Open-Source Sharing Group - OSSG"

All members have the ability to invite new members and to post new Notices (to which they can attach their own open-source creations).

I'm hoping that the group can promote open-source content creation, sharing, and free expression. Please join if you would like to contribute to this Open-Source effort!

You can find the group in Find->Groups. Just search for "OSSG".

I agree with what you're saying, but there are two sides to the coin.

The first point is, as has already been mentioned here - that the complexity of a script doesn't necessarily have a bearing on its value. Certainly I've seen builders charge thousands of L$ for things they could build in a few minutes, but they could only build it in a few minutes because they were a good builder.

The second point is that high quality at low prices isn't necessarily a good idea either. Why not? Because if such price competition does become standard on SL, it will be very easy for prices to be competed down to practically nothing, such that pretty much nobody can compete sensibly - indeed, it's possible that the "market winner" will be somebody who isn't interested in business and so can just sell things for L$1 or so, in which case al business in that sector has shut down. This has already started to happen to some extent with the "multi gadgets", where the scripter sells a large range of different functions at a flat price because repeat custom will pay for their ongoing work, but a new entrant has to accumulate a "debt" of months or years of work before they can compete - which isn't a good situation.

The point of a free competition economic system like the one Second Life enjoys, is that different people with the same product can compete to promote their product, be it through higher quality, more features, or lower prices.

And while offering your work for free, open-source, is the lowest possible price, and therefore wholly undercuts the market for that kind of item, it also gives new users a starting point from which to build their own items, helps them grow their scripting skill, and gives them the ability to produce better quality items in the future.

This leads to higher-quality products, be they scripts or builds, because the builder and scripter have grown better at their craft through observing the work of others.

So, if I (being a relatively competent scripter) spend 5 minutes writing up a sim-wide communication script, then give it away open-source and free (as opposed to the L$500+ others charge), yes, I'm undercutting the competition, but I'm giving the entire community a place from which to start. The competition is perfectly capable of growing, adding new features, better stability, a more fashionable build in which to host the script, and infinite other things, in order to charge more for their product.

Consider it evolution. Competition breeds improvement, as I've said. Price, quality, and features. If I completely undercut the price to nothing, then all the competitors can improve about their items in order to compete are the Quality and the Features of that item.

In the open-source world, there are tons of different audio players. There's Amarok and XMMS and Rhythmbox. All are 100% free and open-source. And the ONLY way they can compete for your favorite is through their quality and features. And if a commercial music app wanted to justify its price, it'd have to best the other three in features AND quality, leading to a much better product, well deserving of its price.

Sorry for rambling, but I do hope you understand what I'm saying?

And as for the years of "debt" you spoke of... You're right. In order to compete viably (and offer products with any decent quality or marketability) you're going to have to sacrifice lots of time to learning your trade very very well. Yes, this means that you probably won't make any money for the first month to a year. When I first started Second Life in 2005, I had to put in LOTS of effort and work before I earned any gains. And when I finally did start earning gains, it was due to a lucky breakthrough in scripting, where I figured out a creative new way to solve a problem. With a little marketing knowledge, I was able to start making reasonable profits from my business.

In ANY business there are sacrifices that have to be made in order to succeed. There is ALWAYS a risk that your business will fail. Second Life is the same. Would you rather see twenty newbies hawking their trash to everyone, flooding the market with worthless garbage, never doing anything to improve their skills or their products because nothing forced them to compete reasonably? Or would you rather see 18 of the 20 fail because of their inability to improve, while the last two moved on to be great artisans, creating amazing work and selling it for reasonable prices, resulting in a successful job that contributes to worthwhile competition among fellow artisans?

Personally, I'd rather see the 18 fail and the 2 excel. Might sound cruel, but it leads to a much better Second Life for everyone (IMHO).

Wow!- if only I had thought of that...

Sigh... Can you teach me to be that smart?

How will you Conway the good news to all the community? including the newbies from today and tomorrow?

"Man against the world" thank you for letting me in on that one

Newbies are so bad!!! ( by the way I love Newbies and find them sweet )

You are right, only a few of us are chosen! I am happy to be amongst those... with you... we are good!

According to your rules, Windows would be outta business by now - or would be a great product...